The Egyptian Minister of Culture, Farouk Hosni, recently asserted that the growing number of headscarf wearers in Egypt must be taken as a sign of backwardness. An interview with Nabil Abdel-Fattah on the background behind the headscarf debate.

Recently, there has been controversy around the veil worn by some Muslim women to conceal their faces. Many have viewed this as a conflict between Muslims on one side and the "Islamophobic" west on the other. Not so.